Oxygen therapy is the administration of oxygen as a therapeutic modality. It is widely used for a variety of purposes in both chronic and acute patient care as it is essential for cell metabolism, and in turn, tissue oxygenation is essential for all physiological functions. Oxygen therapy should be used to benefit the patient by increasing the supply of oxygen to the lungs and thereby increasing the availability of oxygen to the body tissues, especially when the patient is suffering from hypoxia and/or hypoxemia. Oxygen therapy may be used both in applications in hospital or in home care. The main home care application of oxygen therapy is for patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Oxygen may be administered in a number of ways. A preferable way of oxygen administration is by using a so called on demand generation of oxygen. Referring to this, commercial solutions, so-called oxygen concentrators or separators, respectively, are widely known. These oxygen concentrators mostly separate oxygen from an oxygen comprising gas, so that the oxygen is provided on demand, i.e. directly before use.
Known from U.S. Pat. No. 7,329,304 B2 is a portable oxygen concentrator and in detail a portable pressure swing adsorption system for concentrating oxygen as well as a method for using such an apparatus. Such an apparatus includes a plurality of sieve beds or tanks, a compressor, a lower or air manifold defining a plurality of passages therein, a storage tank or reservoir, a set of air control valves for creating one or more flow paths through the passages within the air manifold, and an upper or oxygen delivery manifold. Further an oxygen sensor is provided downstream the reservoir. The oxygen sensor may be coupled to a controller and may generate electrical signals proportional to the purity that may be processed by the controller and used to control or change operation of the apparatus.
There is, however, still potential for improving the operating conditions of oxygen separation devices.